It’s the TENTH (10th!) episode of A Special Place In Hell. In this extra special Special Place, Sarah and Meghan honor the work and legacy of Norah Vincent, the immersive journalist whose untimely death was reported last week. For her 2006 book Self-Made Man, Norah* spent eighteen months infiltrating male spaces as “Ned,” an alter-ego that allowed her to observe how men behave when there are no women around. Though the stunt seems dated now, Norah’s work and outlook were strikingly ahead of her time.
Responding to clips from interviews from ABC News and NPR’s Talk of the Nation, the women/girls examine Norah’s ideas about gender stereotypes, her empathy for men, and her pride in being an androgynous woman. Along the way, Sarah reveals herself to be a failure as a woman because she is an assertive boss and , unlike Meghan, doesn’t say “sorry” all the time. Meanwhile, Meghan admits she broke down in tears listening to old episodes of Talk of the Nation because she’d forgotten how good NPR once was. Sarah, who is shocked at the high quality of Talk of the Nation, explains that she’s never known NPR to be anything but crap and, furthermore, always assumed that writers were, by definition, intellectual lemmings whose job it was to simply restate the obvious. Meghan almost breaks down in tears again. They then remind listeners to rate and review the show.
In the bonus content for only for paid subscribers:
Meghan tells the story about going out to an expensive dinner with Norah Vincent and wondering halfway through if it was a date (admittedly, Meghan WAS leading her on).
Sarah and Meghan discuss what it means to be an “intellectual” and respond to listener comments about the Red Scare podcast and whether they should aspire to be more like it. Can the girls/women pull off the whale-tail? (Spoiler: no!)
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*Yes, we know we’re calling Norah Vincent by her first name even though we called Salman Rushdie by his last name.
Links:
NY Times obit of Norah Vincent
Norah Vincent in the Village Voice on the new “transsexual age” (in 2001!)
Norah Vincent in the L.A. Times on abortion
Norah Vincent on Talk of the Nation
Sarah’s substack piece on Rushdie
Meghan’s intellectual community for freethinking women, The Unspeakeasy. (Home of the “sanity spa vacation!”)
Sorry, Not Sorry